The EPA recently announced grants of almost $2.5 million to fund three projects in Kentucky that advance environmental justice (EJ) as part of President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda. Although Biden’s EJ efforts have hit multiple roadblocks through both political and legal opposition, funding these types of projects marks progress for the administration.

These three projects, selected through the EPA EJ Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement (EJCPS) and EJ Government-to-Government (EJG2G) programs, “will use the funds to ensure disadvantaged communities that have historically suffered from underinvestment have access to clean air and water and climate resilience solutions in alignment with the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice40 Initiative,” an Agency news release says.

“Thanks to Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, we will have the resources necessary to bolster our climate change resiliency,” said Representative Morgan McGarvey (KY-03). “These funds will help us address decades of underinvestment in my community, particularly in West Louisville, by building and fostering healthy neighborhoods. I’m proud to support President Biden’s [EJ] initiatives and will continue working at the federal level to advance health equity and justice across our country.”

EJCPS Program

The EJCPS Program provides financial assistance to eligible organizations working to address local environmental or public health issues in their communities.?The program assists recipients in building collaborative partnerships with other stakeholders (such as local businesses and industry, local government, medical service providers, academia, etc.) to develop solutions to environmental or public health issues at the community level.

The EJCPS Program requires selected applicants, or recipients, to use the EPA's EJCPS Model to address local environmental or public health issues in a collaborative manner with various stakeholders, such as communities, industry, academic institutions, and others.

The model involves bringing these stakeholders together to address a specific issue or concern. With EJ matters, divergent interests must be resolved to address complex and interrelated environmental, public health, economic, and social problems in local communities. Many of these problems are deeply rooted and difficult to resolve without the concerted effort and active participation of all the stakeholders. Partnerships and negotiations are required to resolve the issue or concern.

Ninety-eight organizations were selected for the EJCPS this year, 11 of which were small nonprofit organizations that received over $1.6 million in total. The EJCPS creates a designation of funds exclusively available to small nonprofit organizations, defined as having five or fewer full-time employees.

The EPA’s EJCPS grant selection in Kentucky includes $500,000 for the Parks Alliance of Louisville—People-Powered Parks: Building a Healthy and Resilient West Louisville Neighborhood. This project will actively engage residents of Louisville’s California Neighborhood in the planning, programming, and stewardship of the new 20-acre Alberta O. Jones Park.

EJG2G

The EPA’s EJG2G Program provides funding at the state, local, territorial, and tribal level to support government activities in partnership with community-based organizations that lead to measurable environmental or public health impacts in communities disproportionately burdened by environmental harms.

EPA EJG2G grant selections in Kentucky include the following:

• Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government—$1 million for Ambient Air Toxics and Health Action for the Rubbertown Area (West Louisville). This project seeks to collect ambient air toxics data and identify potential health conditions/diseases that West Louisville residents may be experiencing or are at a higher risk for based on past and current chemical exposures from ambient air pollution in certain ZIP codes.
• City of Paducah—$995,500 for the Breathing Easier Project in the Southside Community of Paducah. The proposed project will have three primary components:
• Capacity building and community engagement
• Reducing indoor toxins and air pollution
• Improving community health for the eight neighborhoods of the Southside Community